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The European Union is busy accomplishing something truly extraordinary: it is fast becoming such a spectacular failure that people don’t even recognize it as one. People have no idea, they just think: this can’t possibly be true, and they continue with their day. They should think again. Because the Grand European Failure is bound to lead to real life consequences soon, and they’ll be devastating. The union that was supposed to put an end to all fighting across the continent, is about to be the fuse that sets off a range of battles.

To its east, the EU is involved in a braindead attempt at further expansion – it has only one idea when it comes to size: bigger is always better -, an attempt that is proving to be such a disaster that heads will roll in the Brussels corridors no matter what. Europe has joined the US and NATO very enthusiastically in creating not just a failed state, but a veritable imitation of Hiroshima, in Ukraine, right on its own borders. The consequences of this will haunt the EU (or if it doesn’t last, which is highly plausible, its former members) not just for weeks or months or years, but for many decades.

The carefully re-crafted relationship with Russia, which took 25 years to build, was destroyed again in hardly over a year, something for which Angela Merkel deserves so much blame it may well end up being her main political legacy. Vladimir Putin, and Russia as a nation, will not easily forget the humiliation the west has thrown at them, the accusations, the innuendo, the attempts to draw them into a war they never wanted and in which they see no advantage for any party involved.

That US warmongers would try and set this up, is something Moscow has long known and expected; that Merkel would stand side by side with the likes of John McCain and Victoria Nuland is seen as a deep if not ultimate betrayal between neighbors and friends. Russia will present Germany with the bill when it feels the time is right. Obviously, all other EU countries that have behaved in the insane ways they have over the past year will receive that same bill, or worse.

To be sure, this week we’ve seen the first protest voices from Germany regarding NATO’s vacuous attempts to draw Russia into the battlefields of Ukraine. But those voices are years too late. They can’t undo the damage already done. They may keep American weapons from reaching Kiev – and even that’s a big maybe -, but they can’t bring back either the lives of the victims, the Ukrainian economy or the trust lost between east and west.

To its south, the EU faces perhaps its most shameful -or should that be ‘shameless’? – problem, because it doesn’t do anything about it: the thousands of migrants who try to cross the Mediterranean to get to Europe but far too often perish in the process.

The Italians spend themselves poor, trying to save as many migrants as they can (170,000 last year!), and there are private citizens – Americans even – pouring in millions of dollars, but the EU itself has zero comprehensive policy as people keep dying on its doorstep all the time. The official line out of Brussels is that the EU polices only the European coastline, but the drownings mostly take place off the Lybian coast. At least Italy and others do sail there to alleviate the human misery.

And now the problem threatens to expand into a whole new and additional dimension, with Muslim extremists like ISIS set to travel alongside the migrants to gain entry into Europe with the aim of launching terror attacks. Having turned a blind eye to the issue for years, Europe will now find itself woefully unprepared for this new development. Still, expect more bluster and brute force where there was never any reason or need for it. That the EU’s MO today.

It’s not just in the south either that migrant problems are rampant: the Ukraine is a hotbed migrant route that Europe has lost control over for obvious reasons, and there have for example been thousands of African refugees camping out in the French port of Calais for what feels like forever, desperate to make it to Britain (I know, God knows why..).

To its west, the EU has Britain, which by the time it gets to vote on Europe may well have its belly so full of Brussels that no scare campaign helps anymore. Then Britain will make a sharp turn right, as many other countries will. Which is exclusively due to the EU, and to all the domestic politicians across the entire spectrum who are so blind to the failings of the Union that the only option voters have if they want out is to choose right extremism.

To its north, the EU doesn’t seem to have much to worry about right now, but don’t you worry: they’ll think of something. Count for instance on Brussels to join Denmark in its Arctic land claims, and offend Moscow some more while they’re at it.

But the biggest failure is not even in politics outside of its own territory. The union rots from within. Which starts with its moral bankruptcy, obviously. If you allow yourself to be an active accomplice in the death of over 6000 East Ukrainians, and you simply look away as thousands of migrants die in the seas off your shores, it should not be surprising that you just as easily allow for a humanitarian crisis, like the one in Greece, to develop within your own borders. It comes with the territory, so to speak.

And make no mistake: this absence of moral values is something Europe in its present form will never be able to claim back. Never. The EU has shown itself to be a gross moral failure, and that’s it: the experiment is over. They can’t come back in 10 or 20 years and say: now we want it back, we’re different now. You’d need to have a whole new union, new rules and principles, and new leadership.

It’s like the US, which once (post WW) had an enormous moral high ground in the world to walk on, and it’s completely gone. Nobody trusts anything America says anymore. America has lost its place in the world as guardian of freedom and democracy, and so has Europe. All they can do now to exert influence is to engage in political scheming and military sabre rattling. Everything else is gone.

What will undo Europe from within is its economic policies. Which are strongly linked to the same moral values issue: inside a union, you cannot let thousands of people go without food and health care while others, a few hundred miles away, drive new Mercs and Beamers over a brand new Autobahn. That’s not a union. That’s a feudal society. And those don’t hold.

In practical terms: Mario Draghi will launch ECB Q€ this month, and it will be as dismal a failure as the entire eurozone project. Because the ECB will need to drop interest rates into very negative territory to keep the ship afloat a little longer, and because Draghi won’t find the sovereign bonds he wants to buy, available in the market.

If Draghi acted in the interest of the entire eurozone and all its citizens, he’d be busy restructuring bank debt in Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, all over the eurozone, instead of playing these monopoly money games. But Draghi’s only pumping more ‘wealth’ into the broke banking system, €1.1 trillion more, to be specific.

Eventually, this refusal to restructure a a bankrupt system will bring bail-ins like the one playing out in Austria right now, closer, across the currency zone (though mostly not before 2016). And by the time that process spreads to ever more banks, which is inevitable, it will have consequences Draghi cannot oversee. And they’ll be of his own making. If he just did his work today, and forced banks to get healthy or close down, it wouldn’t end nearly as messy and chaotic.

Europe’s leaders across all of its institutions are completely lost, whether it comes to intelligence, morals or simple decency. They’re all too willing to trample upon their own people in order to have access to power. And that can only lead to more misery.

I have no idea how well the European Union is doing taking care of it’s own but I am a little baffled about the notion of blaming the EU for what is happening in the Ukraine. I do read news from a variety of sources, mostly on line, and I think the most believable story there is simply that Putin is cashing in on an investment that Stalin made. That is to use the ethnic Russians put in place by uncle Joe in all of the republics of the FSU as leverage to keep those, now, countries in the Russian orbit. He did that in Georgia and now the Ukraine. It appears to me that Putin’s actions are not only consistent with his earlier behavior but also consistent with what petty tyrants do. His economy is trash, some of which can be blamed on the west. But the ramping up of patriotic fervor by making enemies out of foreigners and calling on the Russian people to “save” their ethnic brothers with military adventures would make any 18th century Tsar proud.

@jjhman
Russia is playing completely a defensive game against the Empire.
Ukraine is as close to Russia as Canada is to the US.
We all have a lot to consider going into this world of less squandering.
We are all spoiled princesses, aren’t we.
Don’t worry so much about Putin.
Worry about where you are being directed by the keepers of your zoo.
I’m worried.
I’m growing food and riding a bike.
That’s a small down-payment on change, nothing more…

I cannot imagine where or how you put together a POV like that, except to assume, you are buying the western media lock, stock, and barrel.
There are no good guys here, but clearly the U.S. and the EU are trying their damnedest to physically contain Russia. Merkel is a major player supporting the U.S.’s lead in initiating a coup in Ukraine. Merkel also has supported the sanctions, even if somewhat reluctantly.
The U.S. is also pushing a fifth column movement within Russia, pushing hard on regime change. You might want to check out John C. Tefft.
May I suggest a little reading from outside of the echo chamber?

Alas: the links are very good, as always.
But the comment is turning ever more vicious. It feels as if you have got a huge subsidy from Putin. You completely ignore that he has conquered the Krim and gives lots of military assistence to the Eastern-Ukrainian ‘rebels’. Your pro-Putin voice is so strong that it disqualifies your (rightfull) criticism of US-warmongers.
I feel that your comments hurt the message of Nicole Foss and endangers TAE to turn into a small community of complot-believers.

You only have to read Zbig Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard to understand what the Ukraine war is all about:

“Geopolitical pivots are the states whose importance is derived not from their power and motivation but rather from their sensitive location… which in some cases gives them a special role in either defining access to important areas or in denying resources to a significant player.”

“Ukraine, Azerbaijan, South Korea, Turkey and Iran play the role of critically important geopolitical pivots.”

Brzezinski wrote that Eurasia is “the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played,” and that “it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus also of challenging America.”

Even German leaders are growing increasingly uneasy about the viciousness of the Nuland doctrine that is curently playing out over there. The EU has bigger problems to contend with than assuming the burden of the failed Ukranian state.

It’s with considerable regret that I find so little to argue with here. The European project had once seemed grand, a blueprint of sorts for a more efficacious global polity. But now as Raul notes, is such a cautionary tale as to make these ideals more remote in practice than ever.

Would just add that recently German intelligence stated that they found the Ukranian death toll of 5000 not credible. The actual numbers may be ten times higher.

The corporatist MSM has become utterly nauseating through all this. Interesting to learn about German online readers turning away en masse in disgust from the most heavily visited news sites and now the demonstrations in Ireland against the state broadcaster RTE, as an apologist for austerity.

OT sort of;
Multnomah Falls is very cool and a relatively easy trail takes you across that bridge to the top. The Columbia River Gorge is just stunning with many trails and views. I spent years scrambling up most of the trails; some quite extreme, but rewarding.

Expecting or wanting governments or nations or unions of nations to be moral is a fools errand. I think it was the US which invented the concept when Woodrow Wilson launched his campaign to “make the world safe for democracy” and the League of Nations. This was the international application of American exceptionalism. Americans always were absolutely convinced that America was the worlds greatest nation and eager to testify about it. De Toqueville reported on this and how seemingly every citizen was quick proclaim Americas greatness. They were evangelizing for America on mostly secular grounds but then too it is impossible to separate Americas unique brand of Protestant fundamentalism being part of the mix. For American evangelical fundamentalist Protestants America is directly connected to God and Gods plan, history itself. Where the secular and religious aspects of American exeptionalism start and stop, where they divide, cannot be discerned. They are one and the same.

Non Americans can never fully grasp how belief in American superiority is absolute for perhaps 75% of Americans. On secular or religious grounds or a mix between the belief is ingrained.

The aftermath of WWII made American superiority an economic and military fact. Making real what was always believed. Setting the stage for American as empire now spinning out of control. If history had played out differently and the Axis had won that war of the USSR had somehow prevailed in Europe or some other alt history had occurred I will guess the outcome on moral or ethical terms would have been several orders of magnitude worse than what Ilargi denounces here. Sure America is screwing up. Mainly because it acts or pretends to act on moral and ethical grounds. A national fools errand.

Many parts of what now defined as Ukraine were part of Russia for over 1,000 years Kievan Rus was Russia’s capital at one time. you contention that Stalin populated parts of Ukraine with Russians is totally wrong.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27

Not that I am anybody but I’ve harped before here and elsewhere that it’s difficult to find any political good guys, by our standards, in Ukraine now ohr for the last XX hundred years. The absolute minimum to do some good there would be to do everything possible to prevent conflict and fight hatred. Those have always been in plentiful supply there.

Then know that we, the US and NATO have reopened them. It wasn’t Russia, it was us. If Russia did little to move Ukraine past the post Soviet disaster of corruption we didn’t either. We didn’t surely in part because our Great Global Strategic Thinkers thought that Ukraine could be ‘ours’.

As it stands now both sides are playing their assigned roles as the Bloodlands reopen. Pox on both houses.

The American Protestant you mention is quite a diverse group with a myriad of religious and political viewpoints. Some of them are blinded by a poor understanding of the American Revolution. Some are “confused” about how the country should relate to Israel. Others are being swept up into the emergent church movement, which proposes that it is the mission of Christianity to change the culture for the better.

Fortunately, some are waking up to the facts not being reported by the mainstream media machine and its allies. Blogs such as this are quite useful in stimulating the critical thinking skills of these folks. I, honestly, am quite grateful for these alternative sites. I shudder to think of where I would be today if I didn’t make attempts to search out the truth of current events. All that said, I would encourage you to keep prompting your family, neighbors, and friends to search out that truth as well.

Let us not forget: According to Draghi its QE minus Greek, minus Cypriot banks. Not everybody gets the 60 bn. Those damned Orthodox untermenschen and their accursed banks don’t get a dime, until they completely submit to our wishes and whims and accept they are neo-colonies of the glorious Reich for the next 1000 years and go with the program!

Oh, yes! And according to Our Illustrious Leader Junker, the EU (more like Germany, the ECB and the rest of the bankers) will soon ‘have an army to counter Russia’ (and most probably, to enforce the glorious Austerity down everybody’s throats on the inside). Yeah, that is exactly the EU they were telling us about back in ’92!

And so it was how the Glorious Nation of Oceania was formed.
“War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.”

With respect to the post about Brzezinski’s “The Grand Chessboard”, consider that he was the founding executive of The Trilateral Commission. That group was closely linked to The Council on Foreign Relations and many of the early members served with Jimmy Carter, who was also a member. But, the geopolitical games being played are not really new. For example, recall this historical example of competition among the European colonial powers of the 19th century:

Napoleon had incredible insight, even if he was a tyrant himself. He was a very intelligent tyrant.
“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.”
― Napoléon Bonaparte
I don’t think one in 1,000 people comprehend the essence of this Napoleon observation. It literally sums up the world as it is, not as people suppose it to be.
What can be gleaned from the quote?
1. The Money Power of a nation runs the nation, regardless of the propaganda. While everyone obsesses about governments doing this or that – even on this website – they completely miss the fact that they are simply the “curtain” that conceals the Debt Money Monopoly “Oz” from the masses – and bloggers.
2. Governments ARE NOT undertaking policies to benefit the people governed by the government… This isn’t the US doing anything – it is the Debt Money Monopolists doing it through their vassal Vichy government structures they financed into place. “The US” is being gutted by this supranational group just like this supranational group is gutting the Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Russia.
3. This group is Supranational – they aren’t constrained by national bounderies.
4. They have no decency – NOTHING is off the table for these people, whether it is putting small pox a blanket to further their genocide or financing al Qaeda (now ISIS) to overthrow Libya.
5. Their sole object is gain. Period. More for them, less for you… and there is no decency in how they will mind and physically fork you to get it all for themselves.
Napoleon had a clear comprehension of EXACTLY WHO he was fighting, while the duped British Army thought they were fighting for “country.”

Hey Raul, the kids in this video knew the EU was evil shit long ago, but the complacent middle-aged middle-class “good” people just never got the memo, did they? Remember, “we were strangers until we met”; and if it’s Brian Jonestown Massacre…crank it!

Nothing will change until the ultimate power structure is changed. The private supranational banking cartel hand that rents society and government their government is above the societal and government hands that take – they and not the politicians are ultimately in charge.
While this is a necessary precondition to change, I will not hold my breath as William Jennings Bryan made this clear in his Cross of Gold Speech when he said, “Now, my friends, let me come to the great paramount issue. If they ask us here why it is we say more on the money question than we say upon the tariff question, I reply that if protection has slain its thousands the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands. If they ask us why we did not embody all these things in our platform which we believe, we reply to them that when we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, and that until that is done there is no reform that can be accomplished.”

“Non Americans can never fully grasp how belief in American superiority is absolute for perhaps 75% of Americans.”

I’m thinking you may need to modify that to “75% of still employed Americans still living the the BAU feelgood bubble”. I’m guessing the shine is long off that concept for the majority of citizens of, i.e., Ferguson, and a growing share of the long-term unemployed who don’t even rate inclusion in the % any longer…

I mean, what we’re all circling here, is that the obvious political trajectory of most of the world involves a loss of legitimacy of most institutions in a growing number of citizens, until we have political collapse. Hopefully I get to watch that before the biological collapse, I expect to get a lot of dark entertainment out of it on the ride. If you lived in Arizona, you’d have a front row seat (although thirst may upend the musical chairs rather sooner than later with California legally owning most of the rio Colorado). The amoral antics of our new ice cream CEO governor have already got a recall petition going a month in 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Pass the popcorn!